Today, November 1, is World Vegan Day. The event was established in 1994 by Louise Wallis, then Chair of The Vegan Society in the United Kingdom, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the organization and the coining of the terms “vegan” and “veganism”. This year, we are proud to celebrate World Vegan Day by marking the fourth year of our committed giving program to support animal advocacy and farmed animal protection efforts as a core focus of the company’s activism.

Since 2013, Dr. Bronner’s has run a dedicated philanthropy program to support organizations and efforts that are working to expose and reduce the suffering of animals while advocating for healthier and more sustainable food systems. This commitment is made alongside institutional support of causes such as fair trade, regenerative organic agriculture, drug policy reform, and wage equality. By the end of 2017, Dr. Bronner’s will have donated more than $600,000, totaling over 1.4 million in the last 4 years given to animal advocacy causes.

Our CEO David Bronner explains his motivations for engaging the company in this important work this way:

“When I chose to adopt a vegan diet over 20 years ago, I concluded that though I have the capacity to forget, shut down, and not care about my consumption choices, I want to live in compassionate alignment with the vision that what we choose to eat matters. Now, many years later, I’m proud that my family is committing resources over the long-term to take on the terrible plight of factory farmed animals and to promote more compassionate and sustainable dietary choices.”

Our Process

Our goal is to support organizations and efforts that are smart, strategic and passionate — and ideally ones that are filling a void by taking an approach or tackling a specific angle that other, often better funded, groups aren’t. We choose to work with those who fight to achieve real change and who ultimately, do. Our partners win: from transforming eating habits to exposing abuses on factory farms to changing corporate policy and enacting legislation to rescuing animals and saving lives. It is important for us to support a broad and diverse range of organizations, from the seemingly radical and grassroots to the more conventional and mainstream. Our approach is based on building relationships with key leaders, organizers and advocates within those organizations, making sure we engage as partners in the work and not only write checks.

Because we are concerned with advancing broad progressive change for social justice and environmental sustainability we strive to work with groups who hold intersectional perspectives and approaches. We give priority to groups who are mindful of other issues we work on, such as climate change, regenerative organic agriculture, fair trade, and wage equality. We choose to spread resources to groups working on differing scales and who are serving diverse communities.